Идеи руссоизма в рецепции и творческой полемике сентименталиста В. В. Измайлова
The Ideas of Rousseauism in Reception and Creative Polemics of Sentimentalist V. V. Izmailov

Summary/Abstract: The subject of scientific reflection is the reception and creative interpretation of the ideas of Rousseauism as a special typological trend in the philosophy of the European Enlightenment, which largely determined the aesthetic and axiological principles of Russian sentimentalism, by the writer of the late 18th - early 19th century V. V. Izmailov. Rousseau’s ideas of “natural law,” “sensibility of the heart,” “virtue,” the opposition of “natural” and “civilized man” are the essential factors that determine the poetics of Izmailov’s works. They poetize the virtuous hero as a “man of nature,” the natural equality of people, life “in peace with nature and humanity”. The typology of conflicts and plot-compositional structures of Izmailov’s stories is genetically connected with the ideas of Rousseau’s social anthropology. Integrating the ideas of “education of the mind” and “education of the heart,” Izmailov the artist actualized in the heritage of the Genevan thinker not political, but moral and educational concepts of “creating good in the world,” with which he correlated the tasks of sociocultural progress in Russia after Peter the Great. The philosophical and aesthetic principles of Izmailov the writer, which go back to the ideas of Rousseauism, had a significant impact on the formation of the genre type of the Russian sentimental story and the poetics of the Russian travelogue. While maintaining his ideological sovereignty, the writer not only popularized the ideas of Rousseauism, but also argued with Rousseau on the problems of “civil education,” revising the “man vs. citizen” antithesis justified by the philosopher, critically perceiving his judgments about the negative impact of European civilization on the national way of life of the Russian people. In his social and literary activities, V. V. Izmailov actualized the Rousseauist ideas of the synthesis of the “natural” and “enlightened man,” seeing the prospects for the development of mankind in this.

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